The Story You Tell Yourself: How Unmet Needs Shape Every Thought You Think

We try to think our way out of exhaustion.

We buy another supplement for stress.

We talk about nervous system regulation while keeping every stressful part of our life exactly the same.

We try to find our purpose.

while barely sleeping.

We try to become our best self while our body is begging us to eat lunch.

Sometimes we're trying to fix the top floor while the foundation needs attention.

This is where Maslow's hierarchy of needs can help.

You may remember it from school.

It's usually shown as a pyramid at the bottom are our basic physical needs, food, water, sleep, Shelter.

Then comes safety.

After that comes love and belonging.

Then esteem, which includes confidence, achievement, respect, and feeling capable.

at the top is self-actualization that means purpose growth creativity and becoming more of who you're capable of becoming now life does not move through this pyramid in a perfect order you can have purpose while going through a hard time you can feel loved while also feeling unsafe about money or health human beings are more complicated than a five level pyramid but maslow gives us a really helpful way to look at our lives.

It asks us to stop for a second and say, what level needs my attention right now? I want to combine Maslow's Pyramid with two more tools.

The first is nervous system regulation.

The second is life coaching, especially the model from the Life Coach School, which was created and taught by Brooke Castillo.

The model has five parts, circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results.

Here's how it works.

A circumstance is the actual fact.

It's the part everyone would agree on if we played it back like a video.

For example, I'm meeting Mike for coffee.

We agreed to meet at 10 o'clock.

It is now 1012 and Mike is not here yet.

That's the circumstance.